Martin twisted in bed and in three days the Hallowe’en pumpkins were rotting in trash cans, masks were burnt in incinerators, the bogeys were stacked away on shelves until next year. Hallowe’en was withdrawn, impersonal, untouchable. It had simply been one evening when he had heard horns blowing off in the cold autumn stars, people yelling and thumping windows and porches with soap and cabbages. That was all.
Martin stared at the ceiling for the first three days of November, watching alternate light and dark shift across it. Days got shorter, darker, he could tell by the window. The trees were naked. The autumn wind changed its tempo and temperature. But it was just a pageant outside his window, nothing more. He couldn’t get at it.
Martin read books about the seasons and the people in that world that was now non-existent. He listened each day, but didn’t hear the sounds he wanted to hear.
Friday night came. His parents were going to the theatre. They’d be back at eleven. Mrs. Tarkins, from next door, would come over for a while until Martin got sleepy, and then she would go home.
Mom and Dad kissed him good night and walked out of the house into the autumn. He heard their footsteps go down the street.
Mrs. Tarkins came over, stayed a while and then when Martin confessed to being tired, she turned out all the lights and went back home.
Silence, then. Martin just lay there and watched the stars moving slowly across the sky. It was a clear, moonlit evening. The kind when he and Torry had once run together across the town, across the sleeping graveyard, across the ravine, through the meadows, down the shadowed streets, chasing phantasmal childish dreams.
Only the wind was friendly. Stars don’t bark. Trees don’t sit up and beg. The wind, of course, did wag its tail against the house a number of times, startling Martin.
Now it was after nine o’clock.
If only Torry would come home, bringing some of the world with him. A burr or a rimed thistle, or the wind in his ears. If only Torry would come home.
And then, way off somewhere, there was a sound.
Martin arose in his covers, trembling. Starlight was reflected in his small eyes. He threw back the covers and tensed, listening.
There, again, was the sound.
It was so small it was like a needle-point moving through the air miles and miles away.
It was the dreamy echo of a dog — barking.
It was the sound of a dog coming across meadows and fields, down dark streets, the sound of a dog running and letting his breath out to the night. The sound of a dog circling and running. It came and went, it lifted and faded, it came forward and went back, as if it was being led by someone on a chain. As if the dog was running and somebody whistled under the chestnut trees and the dog ran back, circled, and darted again for home.
Martin felt the room revolve under him, and the bed tremble with his body. The springs complained with metal, tining voices.
The faint barking continued for five minutes, growing louder and louder.
Torry, come home! Torry, come home! Torry, boy, ok Torry, where’ve you been? Oh, Torry, Torry!
Another five minutes. Nearer and nearer, and Martin kept saying the dog’s name over and over again. Bad dog, wicked dog, to go off and leave him for all these days. Bad dog, good dog, come home, oh, Torry, hurry home and tell me about the world! Tears fell and dissolved into the quilt.
Nearer now. Very near. Just up the street, barking. Torry!
Martin held his breath. The sound of dog feet in the piled dry leaves, down the path. And now — right outside the house, barking, barking, barking! Torry!
Barking to the door.
Martin shivered. Did he dare run down and let the dog in, or should he wait for Mom and Dad to come home? Wait. Yes, he must wait. But it would be unbearable if, while he waited, the dog ran away again. No, he would go down and release the lock and his own special dog would leap into his arms again. Good Torry!
He started to move from bed when he heard the other sound. The door opened downstairs. Somebody was kind enough to have opened the door for Torry.
Torry had brought a visitor, of course. Mr. Buchanan, or Mr. Jacobs, or perhaps Miss Tarkins.
The door opened and closed and Torry came racing upstairs and flung himself, yipping, on the bed.
‘Torry, where’ve you been, what’ve you done all this week?’
Martin laughed and cried all in one. He grabbed the dog and held him. Then he stopped laughing and crying, suddenly. He just stared at Torry with wide, strange eyes.
The odour arising from Torry was — different.
It was a smell of earth. Dead earth. Earth that had lain cheek by jowl with unhealthy decaying things six feet under. Stinking, Stinking, rancid earth. Clods of decaying soil fell off Torry’s paws. And — something else — a small withered fragment of — skin?
Was it? Was it! WAS IT!
What kind of message was this from Torry? What did such a message mean? The stench — the ripe and awful cemetery earth.
Torry was a bad dog. Always digging where he shouldn’t dig. Torry was a good dog. Always making friends so easily. Torry took to liking everybody. He brought them home with him.
And now this latest visitor was coining up the stairs. Slowly. Dragging one foot after the other, painfully, slowly, slowly, slowly.
‘Torry, Torry — where’ve you been!’ screamed Martin.
A clod of rank crawling soil dropped from the dog’s chest.
The door to the bedroom moved inwards.
Martin had company.
The End
